Krishna Venta

Religious name adopted by Francis Heindswater Pencovic, founder of the now-defunct WFLK (Wisdom, Faith, Love, and Knowledge) Fountain of the World, a Hindu-based religious community. Pencovic grew up in Utah as a Mormon and was orphaned when he was eight. Venta who claimed to be Christ, was said to have come from the planet Neophrates many years ago and landed in Nepal. He was teleported to the United States on March 9, 1932, and took over the biography of a three-year-old boy, Francis Pencovic, who had recently died. He gathered a following that settled in the Box Canyon area of the San Fernando Valley in the 1940s.

During the 1950s Krishna Venta was accused of unfaithfulness to his wife with various women of the group. On December 10, 1958, several former members whose wives were still in the group encountered Krishna Venta in the administrative building of the group's communal settlement and set off a dynamite bomb that killed ten people, including Venta. His wife succeeded him as leader of the group, which continued into the early 1980s.

Krishna Venta

Krishna Venta (born Francis Herman Pencovic, March 29, 1911 - December 10, 1958) - minor California cult (the term used in the newspapers of his day) leader born in San Francisco. Venta founded the WKFL (Wisdom, Knowledge, Faith and Love) Fountain of the World cult in Simi Valley, California in the late 1940s. The group was responsible for a multitude of positives, including fighting wildfires and feeding the homeless.

Pencovic legally changed his name to "Krishna Venta" in 1951.

He died in Chatsworth, California on December 10, 1958 in a suicide bombing instigated by two disgruntled former followers (Peter Duma Kamenoff and Ralph Muller) who, although never offering any documentary evidence to support their claims, charged that Venta had both mishandled cult funds and been intimate with their wives.

A branch of the WKFL Fountain of the World cult was also established in Homer, Alaska in the years prior to Venta's death. Fountain membership at both sites declined rapidly following Venta's death, and the cult had ceased to exist entirely by the mid-1970s.

Pencovic/Venta is also remembered because of the child support case Pencovic v. Pencovic, 45 C2d 97, Cal Sup Ct (1955).

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Krishna Venta

• Krishna Venta at CharlieManson.com
• Pencovic v. Pencovic (1955) 45 C2d 97
• Krishna Venta information archive

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